


Delaying the End

by TeaRoses



Category: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 10:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11251584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: It's the end of the world, but Celebi still has time to think about Grovyle.  Written for hurt/comfort bingo for the prompt "hostile climate."





	Delaying the End

The darkness is an absence of light but a presence of pain. Not the lovely velvet of night but the feeling of being encased, closed in, even when there is nothing else there. It's so difficult to walk, or to move at all. And Celebi wishes it were even darker, so that she couldn't see the leaves of the trees in their frozen stillness or the water that hangs between the rocks, stopped forever from its natural course. 

Celebi used to fly but the idea of getting off the ground seems ridiculous. She's barely walking, crawling really, and she isn't going to see Grovyle. It's just that her journey will be over when she reaches the place where he is.

It's cold of course, a cold that aches. She used to think nothing moved on a still day but of course something did, insects or flowers or the slow sun. But now there is truly nothing moving, nothing shining, nothing guiding her. The still air seems to cling to her and slow her down. Sometimes she even wishes that her own heart had stopped and she didn't have to feel the world's destruction on her skin but the darkness isn't fair or just like that. Or maybe it doesn't understand hearts. She doesn't either. And she is so tired.

Celebi keeps moving at her slow pace. She has only the vaguest idea where she is, she who used to know each small meadow and be one with the wild grasses. The grass is now little dark spears that scrape against her as she pulls her body over them. But there is nothing to do but to keep moving in this place that forbids movement, to stay awake despite her exhaustion though the world is sleeping. Celebi corrects herself. Sleep is breath and dreams. The world is dead.

Finally she sees someone moving and as soon as she understands that she has found another Pokemon she realizes it is Grovyle. She would know him anywhere, even though she wasn't really looking for him, was she?

"Celebi!" He recognizes her, too.

She goes closer. "Grovyle," she says. "I can't bear this anymore. Can anyone?"

"That's a bit dramatic," he says, because Grovyle is always Grovyle, but they both know what is happening and that they cannot keep going much longer.

"We are alive, but only for now," she continues. 

"Perhaps there is some solution," he insists. "A way to change things."

"How could we do that without changing time itself?" she asks. They are both silent, because Celebi could change time itself but if she could see a way out of this she would have used it long ago.

"I think a human could help," Grovyle continues.

"A human?" They were mere legends, even before the darkness came.

"I will think. There must be a way," he says, somehow managing to sound determined and optimistic in the midst of emptiness.

Celebi is afraid to hope and afraid to move. She just sits near Grovyle and counts her breaths. After a time she feels a wisp of a leaf in her hair. Something is moving? Then she realizes it is one of Grovyle's leaves and he is brushing it against her. 

"Did you really come all the way here by yourself?" he asks her.

"Obviously," she replies.

"Just rest then," he says, and still she feels the leaf.

"I haven't slept in ... it might be days. Who can tell time anymore?" she asks rhetorically. "Time is gone, growth is gone, love is gone..." She trails off, afraid to use that word with him even now when nothing matters.

But she still feels the strokes of the leaf, and Grovyle says, "Even without time there is still love. Now sleep, you silly creature."

Celebi dares to inch closer to him, closes her eyes, and dreams of leaves and sunlight.


End file.
